Box 4.1 Lead-in

Audre Lorde (1984), in her famous essay, ‘The Master's tools will never dismantle the master's house’, argues as follows:

What are the ‘master's tools’ Audre Lorde refers to in this essay? If the ‘master's tools’ will never dismantle the ‘master's house,’ what tools do language educators need to gather, acquire, and/or develop to bring about genuine change in their classrooms and the society at large?

Introduction

Language and language education stand at the intersection of social, cultural, and political ideologies that empower certain populations while marginalizing others (Avineri et al., 2019; Glynn et al., 2014; Hastings and Jacob, 2016; Hawkins, 2011; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2009; Osborn, 2006). Language education is a political act since “many decisions about what gets taught, to whom, how, when, and where, are made at high levels of the political hierarchy” (Pennycook, 1989, p. 590). Everything language teachers do in their classrooms – from macro-level processes (e.g., curriculum development and textbook selection) to micro-level activities (e.g., lesson planning and classroom interactions) – has social, political, and economic implications on language learners’ lives and the society at large (Auerbach, 1995; Pennycook, 2001). Social justice language education, in that sense, encompasses epistemological beliefs, ideological dispositions, and pedagogical practices that help language learners develop a sense of advocacy and activism that transcends classroom walls (Coney, 2016; Hawkins, 2011; Ortaçtepe Hart and Martel, 2020). The present chapter will take a pedagogical approach to discuss the following four strategies that situate social justice at the center of a language curriculum:

• • Centralizing social justice within lesson planning

• • Cultivating activism for social change

• • Deconstructing language education materials

• • Reconstructing materials to develop learners’ critical literacy

Box 4.2 Reflective task

Reflect on your reasons – or the reasons others might have – for pursuing a career in language teaching. Which of these are related to achieving social justice in the world? In what ways can social justice language education enable language educators to enhance teaching and learning practices in educational contexts within which they find themselves, while also affirming their learners’ identities and improving their life experiences?